Energy efficiency is a concern in operating and managing computing services. Power consumption can affect the operational costs for the computing services and can contribute to the environmental impact of computing services. The power consumption of servers and switches in a network can be a significant contributor to the cost of operating a network. Some servers and switches can consume 70-80% of their peak power even when idle, thus wasting power and money.
Some networks can use inexpensive commodity switches connected together in a certain topology which can reduce the need to have high-bandwidth specialized root switches that are expensive and consume large amounts of power to operate. Some networks in certain configurations, such as a fat tree, for example, can use multiple switches that form a number of networks and/or a number of redundant paths for network traffic on the switches. The switches used in such network configurations can be commodity switches that use less power and are less expensive than root switches.
Some data centers that perform computing functions are designed for peak operation allowing the network to have the capability to operate at its maximum capacity at any time. In many data center networks, the average network utilization is much lower than peak, therefore networking equipment, such as servers and switches, are idle for long periods of time.
In some previous approaches, computing functions have been distributed across many servers in a network based on the type of computing function. Distributing network traffic based on the type of computing function created efficiencies in the network by apportioning network traffic so that the quantity of traffic remains balanced among the various servers and switches in the network.